As the wind whips through Vancouver and rain (finally) makes its welcome return after a drought stricken summer, I’m already missing the sun and warmth. We knew this would happen, and that we’d start to yearn for the long summer days but I guess it does make the memory of a sweltering week-end away all the more valuable. Life is full of contrasts, non?

Take one rustic (read very basic) cabin with no water or electricity, a pit toilet a relatively short walk through the forest with no door, a dock reaching into the lake the cabin fronts onto, add plentiful sunshine, no crowds and temperatures hovering in the high twenties and you have a three-day idyll. Escaping a holiday week-end in the city for the Sunshine Coast we took an easy 40 minute ferry outside of Vancouver, added in about an hours drive up to the quiet community of Egmont Village and ended up driving down a grassy, largely unused track posted with signs for us put up by my sister and her husband to the borrowed cabin. In all fairness there was a fridge we could run on propane and a gas cooker which made life relatively easy. Huge fry up breakfasts of egg and bacon, pancakes with yogurt and fruit, plentiful coffee. Oh yes – the coffee was on the go from the moment whoever woke up first and started the first pot and kept going for a good hour or two before food was plated – all this struck me as a quintessentially Canadian cabin-on-the-lake holiday experience.

The cabin dock, it made every steep walk up and down to it worth it.

Swimming ruled the days, too hot to ride much we did explore the local, seriously hilly roads into the village and past the exquisite looking West Coast Wilderness Lodge (we peered through a small side gate at the inviting looking restaurant terrace but decided our unwashed state was an impediment to getting through the front door).

Just up the road was an hours walk through the forest to Skookumchuck Narrows Provincial Park, where vast amounts of water are forced through the narrows twice a day as the tidal flows from Sechelt Inlet, Salmon Inlet and Narrows Inlet run together through the Sechelt Rapids. It’s a spectacular sight as whirlpools and waves froth and foam attracting extreme kayakers wanting to ride the standing waves. The power of the water was tangible and intimidating.

Beautiful but deadly. Deceptively calm as water starts to pour into the narrows.

After the vicarious adrenaline rush it was back to a leisurely stroll through the bone dry forest, and later a sip of wine (or two) as we sat chatting on the dock. Not a bad wind down to summer. As I look out through the rain spattered window I realize that any time away (particularly camping) from now on is likely to be a damp affair. And that’s quite alright, rain and wind has its own charm when you’re huddled in a tent drinking coffee, and if  we’re lucky we might catch a few days of sun. Not long to autumn, but summer isn’t over yet!